


Something More Than Friends

by flyingisland



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oblivious Shiro (Voltron)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-02
Updated: 2018-06-02
Packaged: 2019-05-17 11:13:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14831211
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingisland/pseuds/flyingisland
Summary: Shiro doesn’t think that it’s normal for couples to invite their mutual friend on all of their dates. Keith and Lance seem to disagree.





	Something More Than Friends

**Author's Note:**

  * For [epiproctan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/epiproctan/gifts).



> a special thanks to [paladongs](https://twitter.com/paladongs) for the art featured in this story!

Among the hustle and bustle of a small family restaurant, in the warm glare of the late afternoon sun, tucked away at a booth in the corner, just under the wide, open window—

Takashi Shirogane is on a date.

He’s doing his best to steady his breathing, remembering all of the advice that past karate teachers and yoga instructors have told him over the years. He remembers the lamaze instructions that his mother had walked his aunt through while she was going into labor—hones the abilities of all of the greatest warriors in history, if only so he can stay calm in the here and now.

Because Lance’s hands are everywhere, somehow all at once. He’s always been a touchy-feely kind of guy. He’s always been the sort to linger a little bit longer than Shiro thinks that he needs to—to smile for just a moment too long, to bat those pretty, thick eyelashes and flash that gorgeous, confident smile. He’s always been the type to knock Shiro right off of his feet, even without meaning to. He’s fated, Shiro thinks, to make his journey through life without ever completely realizing what an intoxicating effect he has on everyone around him.

He’s pressed firmly against Shiro’s side, his knees drawn up into the booth seat, practically sitting in Shiro’s lap. He seems eager to touch as much of Shiro now as humanly possible. And it seems as though, curiously enough, he has no idea how strange of a concept that is.

Beneath the table, he can feel Keith’s feet nudging forward to slide up against his own. Keith, perusing the menu, pretends that he doesn’t notice a thing. He’s flipping idly through the pages, his head propped up under one closed fist. When Shiro jerks his legs back as far as he can, smacking them against the edge of the bench, neither of them spare him more than a momentary glance.

Shiro is on a date, yes. He’s on a date with two men who he finds very, very attractive. He’s spending quality time with two of his closest friends—his most trusted connections, the kindest and bravest and most admirable people who he knows, but…

He’s not on a date with either of them.

He’s third-wheeling, once again, on a date  _between the two of them_ , instead.

He isn’t sure if this is some kind of fetish that they’ve simply neglected to get his consent to be a part of. He isn’t sure if, for whatever reason, they just get off on making him uncomfortable. He isn’t sure if Keith even realizes that his feet are absolutely too big and clumsy to be Lance’s—and if maybe Lance is only clinging to him so tightly because the two of them are fighting and he’s trying to make Keith jealous.

But he  _does_ know that this situation couldn’t get any more awkward—especially when the waitress draws nearer to their table, raises a curious eyebrow, and asks them in the most deadpan voice that Shiro thinks might be humanly possible if they’ve decided what they’re wanting to order.

“You been studying that menu, dreamboat?” Lance asks him wryly, cocking his head to the side and shooting Shiro another dazzling smile—too close and too cute, sending Shiro’s head into a wild swirl of a thousand highly inappropriate thoughts to be having about his roommate’s beloved boyfriend. “We could just order a big thing of nachos and share it, like cute couples do in the movies, you know?”

Shiro feels his face grow exponentially hotter. Keith, across the table, snorts a laugh.

“Why would he want to share food with you? Everyone knows you always double-dip.”

Keith’s inflection is flat, but Shiro doesn’t miss the small spark of something coy in the subtle upturning of his lips. Lance cracks a laugh, wagging his eyebrows and pressing himself somehow even firmer against Shiro’s side. He winds both arms around Shiro’s bicep and nearly pulls him over into his lap as he leans inward and sticks his tongue out at Keith.

“Some people like my spit, thank you very much! You’re just mad because no one wants to share with you!”

So it’s either a joke, or a fight. Shiro has to admit that he has a lot of trouble telling the difference between the two, even when they result in a violent tussle or an argument so loud that it could truly wake the dead.

Sometimes, he muses, the two of them get so aggressive while they’re joking that he’s walked in on them wrestling aggressively on the floor. He’s always wondered if that was their form of foreplay, and if somehow in place of all of the gentle kisses and slow, careful touches that he’s more accustomed to, this is just how Keith and Lance feel more comfortable getting each other in the mood.

He’s always hated that he can’t stop thinking about the two of them getting hot and bothered from roughing each other up. He hates that, no matter how platonic he tries to keep things between himself and these two friends, he can never manage to stop those forbidden thoughts from blossoming in his brain.

But in the end, they share the nachos.

And in the end, instead of looking frustrated, instead of making some further sardonic comment about Lance pressuring Shiro into doing his bidding, Keith’s responding smile is small, but happy. His long lashes brush against the apples of his cheeks as he flicks his gaze back down to the menu to read off his own order. His skin is brushed with the most charming shade of pink that Shiro thinks he’s ever seen before.

And those lips—those lips that Shiro knows must be soft, must be warm, must be the most miraculous heaven to kiss—they’re upturned and pressed out. Keith’s smile is so ethereal, in the orange glow of the sun setting through the window. He’s so pretty now, when he’s smiling because of something that Shiro managed to do for him.

Shiro has been in love with Keith since they were little kids. And when Keith brought Lance into both of their lives, Shiro has to admit that he’d wanted more than anything to dislike him. He’d wanted to be bitter that Keith had gravitated to anyone else but himself. He’d wanted to agonize over it—to revel in his own selfish anguish, to tell himself that it was Keith’s fault for not just figuring things out, despite the fact that he’d never voiced his feelings, or given Keith any tangible indication that he’s ever thought of him as anything more than just a friend.

Despite the fact that he’d always been too chickenshit to just make a move, and instead had deluded himself into thinking that Keith would always be there, available to him, when he was finally ready to bite the bullet and make a grab for what he really wanted.

But Lance, he’d learned, is funny. Lance is kind and considerate. Lance smooths out Keith’s hard edges effortlessly—makes him smile and laugh. He’s patient. He understands the nuances of a difficult person like Keith. He knows when to push him, and when to take his time.

And Lance is gorgeous too—with that sunshine smile, with those perfect, pearly teeth. With the lively shade of his skin, and the lush, silk softness of his hair, that’s currently tickling against the side of Shiro’s face as he moves about, already childishly excited for their food to arrive.

Keith is the moon, Shiro thinks—mysterious and quiet, always there but sometimes hidden behind the clouds, and the walls that he builds around himself. Keith is reticent and beautiful. Keith is a silent, reliable person. He’s breathtaking, delicate, and otherworldly. Keith is the sort of person who sonnets are written about. Keith is the kind of person who leaves a mark on the lives of all who know him—someone who anyone would be a fool to forget.

But Lance, Shiro knows, is the sun: brilliant and lively—a little much at times, but an integral part of this relationship now—the most becoming, most charming and amazing person who Shiro has ever met in his life.

Lance lights up a room when he enters it. Lance breathes life into all who he meets.

The two of them together are perfect, Shiro knows this. They compliment each other in ways that Shiro could never hope to comprehend.

He can’t be blamed for falling in love with either of them, or both of them at the same time. He can’t be held accountable for being drawn to these two very exquisite sides of the very same coin, no matter how painfully he understands that none of his feelings can possibly be reciprocated, or accepted with anything short of disgust and surely, a stinging sense of betrayal.

He knows that there’s no room for someone like himself in their relationship, knows that it would ruin things between all three of them if he was ever so selfish or clumsy that he slipped up and let them know.

He’s been drowning in these unrequited feelings even since Keith brought Lance back to their apartment to meet him a few years ago. He’s been smothering himself in this agonizing, slow death of unspoken feelings, telling himself that everything, truly, is totally fine.

He can come along for their dates.

He can pretend that everything is normal.

Keith’s feet slide flush against both of his own beneath the table. Lance presses his warm smile against his shoulder, in something far too similar to a clumsy kiss.

Their food arrives, and Lance dips bitten-chips in the nacho cheese two or three times. Keith sends him knowing glances, sly smiles, as his feet rub gently over the sides of Shiro’s shoes.

They’re going to kill him someday, if they keep this up.

But truth be told, Shiro can’t imagine a more enjoyable way to go.

 

* * *

 

Later in the night, long after Keith and Lance kissed goodbye and parted ways in front of Lance’s apartment complex, Shiro and Keith have returned to their own home. They took a quick detour on the way back, stopping by the local convenience store and picking up a few small groceries—milk, shampoo, and a new kitchen sponge. Some candy that Keith said that Lance liked, more lotion for the bathroom that neither Keith nor Shiro were willing to admit that they go through entirely too fast.

Shiro had told himself that it wasn’t weird to pretend that the two of them were a couple arguing over which brand of shampoo would be the best for Shiro’s hair. He’d convinced himself that it wasn’t a bold step over the tentative boundaries between them—the threshold between appropriate friend behavior and acting like some kind of creep—to allow himself to feel as though Keith was one of his two very perfect boyfriends, teasing him when they’d passed the hair dye section, about finding something to color the white strands of his bangs. He’d cited the measly six year gap between their ages as he’d raised a box of dye designed for older men, made some snide speech through his smug little grin about how Shiro needed to touch up his “old man roots” if he ever wanted to settle down with anyone under sixty.

Keith had snickered then, scrunched his nose and smiled in that adorable way that he always does when he’s being ornery. Shiro had jokingly punched him in the arm—light enough that it was more of a nudge than anything too painful, gentle enough that Keith had barely been moved by him, but enough that Shiro could revel in the warmth of his skin through his sleeve. Just enough contact that Shiro might be tortured by these intrusive thoughts of how easy it might have been to pull Keith into a kiss—then and there, right in the center of the convenience store, for every other patron to see.

But now, they’re home. Keith is in the bathroom taking a shower before bed. Shiro is in his bedroom, pulling his shirt over his head and stepping out of his pants. He tosses his clothes into the laundry basket, draws in a deep breath and rubs both hands over his face before sliding into bed. He stares at the ceiling as he listens to the sound of the shower running on the other side of the wall. He imagines all of that warm water cascading over the firm lines of Keith’s naked body—clinging to the peach-fuzz hair on the surface of his supple skin.

And Shiro imagines that Lance might be showering as well—before putting on the overnight skin masks that he’s talked about concocting like some kind of mad scientist in his bathroom. He can envision Lance rubbing coconut oil in his hair, the sweet cocoa butter over his smooth, tanned skin. He can picture both of them perfectly, after spending so much time considering what they must look like when they take off their clothes.

He isn’t proud to admit that he can imagine how hairless and soft Lance must be. How Keith must be firmer, with thicker, less manicured hair. He can see Lance in his mind’s eyes—sitting on his closed toilet seat with a towel tied over his hair, his skin slick with all of his homemade product, a mirror and a pair of tweezers held close to his face.

And he can see Keith, too, stepping out of the shower onto the mat, rubbing his bath towel furiously in his hair before he wipes away the condensation on the mirror and opens the medicine cabinet to perform his only nightly beauty routine—deodorant, then brushing his teeth before bed. Everything that Keith claims, no matter how often Lance argues, that any reasonable person needs.

Shiro swallows thickly, shuddering out another breath before leaning over to flip off his bedside lamp. He sits in the dark then, screwing his eyes closed as he lays flat on his back under the blankets. He ignores the throbbing of his erection, tight in the confines of his boxers. He tells himself that it would definitely be inappropriate to take care of this problem now with Keith just one room over. With Keith and Lance both unknowing participants in this degrading fantasy that he’s found himself getting inappropriately excited about.

He’s prided himself, for a long time, on the fact that he’s never been particularly gross with either of them. For the most part, sans a few awkward stumbles along the way, he’s managed to keep his feelings completely to himself, buried so deep inside of him that he can usually keep them out of his thoughts while he touches himself, too.

He’d feel too guilty, he thinks, if he knew that he was using them for something as perverted as lowly masturbation fodder. He imagines that maybe Lance wouldn’t mind it—might even think that it’s hilarious that Keith’s best friend has the hots for him—but he knows that Keith would never forgive him. He knows that the faith that Keith has in other people is shaky at best, that he tries his hardest to forgive and forget when he opens himself up enough to trust someone, but this, surely, would just be too much.

He knows that something would ripple between them then, if Keith ever found out about any of this. He knows that things would just be too different, if he ever told Keith that he’s fantasized about what he gets up to with his beloved boyfriend behind closed doors, or in the shower, or really anywhere, in even the most mundane situations anymore.

Even if he doesn’t touch himself while thinking about it, he knows that none of this is okay.

Even if he never makes an effort to push things in that awful, forbidden direction, he knows that none of this is even remotely appropriate behavior between three very platonic friends.

He just wishes, sometimes, like now, when he’s feeling particularly weak, that maybe the two of them would stop teasing him. But he knows that it’s not their fault. He knows that these problems are his, and his alone. That neither of them can be held accountable for being too attractive for his mental health and general well-being.

That none of them could reasonably be blamed for his own overcharged libido making mountains out of molehills every time that the three of them go out on these dates, when Keith teases him while they’re out shopping, when Lance’s touches linger for just a little bit too long, and things feel far too intimate for him to possibly convince himself that the two of them have no idea what they do to him.

Before he can delve ever-deeper into this pit of self-hatred and despair, he hears his bedroom door crack open. It takes every ounce of his self-restraint not to groan in misery.

His dick has softened somewhat during his mental tirade, but for the most part, he knows that it isn’t completely indiscernible if someone were to happen to brush against him. If someone, like Keith—slowly padding through the darkness and slipping into bed next to him—were to press further into him—as he is, while Shiro listens to the thundering of his own heart, and the rampant warning alarms whirring in his head—and wrap their arms around his waist.

It’s not unusual for Keith to sneak into his bed. Three times a week, at the absolute minimum, Keith finds every excuse to slide in here and spend the entire night spooning him.

They used to share a bed a lot when they were kids. They used to have sleepovers in blanket forts crafted in Shiro’s bedroom. They’d make shadow puppets in front of a flashlight pointed at the wall, they’d roll out beach towels next to Shiro’s parents’ pool, stargaze late at night in the grass, make up their own constellations and the lore that they’d write about them if they’d been alive when all of the greats had written that mythology.

He’s never had the heart to tell Keith that it stopped being appropriate when they went through puberty. He’d never had the gall to tell Keith that when he snuggles closer, when he must think that he’s doing nothing but finding comfort in the arms of his best friend, Shiro is too perverse to keep things totally PG.

But Keith is with Lance now—has been for three entire years. And he doesn’t know if Keith has ever told Lance about this, or how he could even imagine that Lance could reasonably feel.

This would be considered cheating by any normal person’s standards, right? This is vastly inappropriate behavior. If he were dating someone—if he’d had any partners since a measly string of short-term girlfriends back in college—he’d imagine that he wouldn’t like finding out that they spent their nights getting cozy with their roommate, no matter how vehemently they claimed that they were just friends.

He can understand very clearly how all of this would seem suspicious out of context to anyone on the outside—especially, he thinks shamefully, if Lance had any idea how desperately Shiro wishes that he could move his relationship with Keith to a whole new level.

Granted, he also feels the same way with Lance. Granted, a handful of times since Lance entered their lives, he’s fallen asleep tangled up with Shiro while the three of them watched movies in the living room—and Shiro has confirmed that yes, it’s definitely just as miserable and torturous not kissing Lance during the moments and hiding the humiliating firmness in his pants when Lance finally nods awake.

It’s not fair, really, that the both of them can be so absolutely irresistible. And it’s definitely borderline criminal that they don’t seem to understand it—that they can put him in this position, again and again, where it takes everything that he has to be a good friend, a good roommate, and to never make a move to change anything between the three of them.

Keith’s hip brushes against his dick—which springs back to life almost automatically. He bites his lip to quell the hiss behind his teeth, slams his eyes closed so forcefully that he can see dots against his eyelids. He can feel Keith shifting to look up at him.

“You need any help, Shiro?”

He can’t possibly know what he’s asking right now. Shiro wishes for nothing more than to be dead.

Keith has never been even remotely suggestive with him. Keith has never made a note of all of the times that he’s awoken with Shiro’s erection pushed flush against his ass.

“I—” Shiro bites off the end of that sentence, takes a deep, steadying breath and wills away the jitters of his nerves. “A-Are you sure Lance would be okay with this?”

He can feel Keith’s hair brush against his face as he tips his head to the side. It’s quiet for a short, agonizing moment.

“Why would he care?”

Shiro, in a profound show of mental and physical strength, untangles himself from Keith abruptly and pulls himself out of his bed.

“I—I’m going to the bathroom. I just—I think you should talk to Lance about this.”

Keith’s voice, soft and light and airy—innocent and devoid of any cracks or laughter that might denote that he’s actually making a rare joke, asks, again, “Are you sure you don’t want my help?”

Shiro slams the door behind him.

The hall, in the dark, feels extraordinarily cooler than the bedroom. He presses his back against the opposite wall, placing a hand against his chest as though to calm his swiftly-beating heart. This is getting to be too much. There has to be some logical explanation for all of this—some fault of his in a past life that brought down the wrath of God on him in this dimension. Some stupid mistake that he keeps making again and again to find himself in this very same position.

He knows that he’s getting his hopes up with both of them, that he wants nothing more than to believe that maybe, deep down, the two of them might like him too.

He knows that it’s stupid to set himself up for disaster by even considering entertaining the notion that they could think of him, as he thinks of them.

But on his way to the bathroom, as he draws his fingers over the wall to steady himself in the dark, he imagines that maybe Keith had meant exactly what it had sounded like in his bedroom. Maybe Lance really had meant to kiss him when he’d pressed his lips against his arm.

These thoughts feel just as pathetic while he’s fantasizing about them in the dark bathroom. And when he finishes, when he cums with a small, muffled cry against his palm, he feels, even more intensely, like the worst friend in the entire world.

 

—————-

 

Shiro returns from work the next morning at the same time as usual. The nine to five never stops feeling quite as monotonous—quite as mundane and commonplace as it has since the first month after the excitement of landing his first job out of college had finally worn away.

It’s warm outside as he walks home. The flowers on the few trees at every bus stop and street corner are blossoming, petals floating in slow motion through the air as they drop from the branches and get caught up in the gentle breeze.

Shiro finds himself in unusually high spirits—given the fact that he’s already sweating in his uncomfortably stiff suit, that work today had been so boring that he’d dozed off three times in the middle of his tasks, and that he’d exiled himself to the couch in the living room last night, slept fitfully, and awoken to Keith stirring him awake 20 minutes after his alarm should have went off.

Before he’d left for the day, Keith had stopped him with a hand on his arm. There had been a storm brewing in his eyes, with his brows low, his mouth set in a firm, self-conscious line. He hadn’t met Shiro’s gaze completely—had focused his attention instead on the cracked paint lining the threshold of the door, before he’d forced out, in a tiny, pitiful voice that had pinched Shiro’s heart in just the most painful way, “Are you… are you mad at me? Did I do something wrong?”

He hadn’t understood exactly what Keith was referring to back then. He’d been running late, and he’d known that his boss wouldn’t go easy on him, even if he were dumb enough to spill his guts about all of the confusing things that have been preventing him from performing his best as of late.

He’d offered only a small, half-hearted smile. He’d patted Keith lightly two times on the shoulder, before shrugging off his hand.

“Everything’s fine, Keith,” he’d said then, and Keith hadn’t looked even remotely convinced, “but I still think you should talk to Lance about everything when you see him later.”

On his way out, after slipping his feet into his shoes and shuffling awkwardly out into the hall as he’d attempted to situate them without the use of his hands, Shiro had heard Keith ask him in quiet exasperation, “Talk to Lance about  _what_?”

But he hadn’t had time or the right words to answer.

He’d scurried off with his tail between his legs, promising Keith, and knowing all too well that he’d been lying, that they’d find more time to talk about all of this a different time.

He feels like he might be at odds with Keith now when he gets home. He has a sinking feeling that he might end up having to air some of his own dirty laundry after all.

Keith can’t possibly understand how all of this is inappropriate if he doesn’t understand that Shiro doesn’t see him as just a friend. It should be Shiro’s problem alone, really, that he’s so gross that he can’t even do something as simple as sleep in the same bed as his best friend without making it out to be some kind of elicit midnight rendezvous between two star-crossed, almost-lovers.

Surely, Lance wouldn’t think anything of it, because he’d trust Keith not to make any mistakes.

And surely, the only person who should be ashamed here is Shiro, who can’t keep his libido in check even long enough to lie in bed with Keith without getting aroused—or to sit at some booth in a very public restaurant with Lance without imagining what it might feel like to kiss him or to hold his hand.

He draws in a deep, frustrated sigh, drags himself up the stairs into his and Keith’s apartment building. He can smell something burning before he even gets close to their door from down the hall. He imagines that Keith is trying to cook again—and ascertains, from this, that Lance must have come to visit too.

Great, he thinks, just awesome.

Twice as many chances that he’ll mess everything up once and for all today.

He turns his key in the door, pushes it open and steels himself for whatever ridiculous thing is going to greet him once he steps inside. Once he makes it through and closes the door behind him, he sees Lance already splayed out on the couch. He’s in shorts that cut off just high enough above the knees that Shiro has to force his gaze not to linger on his smooth, perfectly-sculpted thighs. He’s in a loose-fitting tank top that doesn’t leave nearly as much to the imagination as Shiro thinks might be integral to his own fragile sanity.

And Keith, beyond the living room, in the adjoining, wall-less kitchen, is sulking with his arms crossed next to the microwave. Shiro spots a bag of popped popcorn strewn carelessly on the counter, and he recognizes the smell in here once he sees it.

Keith, he knows, always leaves it in the microwave for just a little bit too long. He’s always been infuriated by those extra kernels that never want to pop. He’s determined that there must be some perfect cooking time that will preserve the unburned state of the popcorn, while still managing to leave no kernels left unpopped.

They’ve bickered about this fairly often. But no matter how many times Shiro tries to convince him that their microwave definitely isn’t fancy enough to make all of those popcorn-themed dreams of his come true, Keith is never quite willing to relent.

Keith gives him a look as though to say,  _“Don’t even think about trying to help me”_  before jerking his head towards the couch. Lance has already turned around in his seat, the remote loose in his hands as some random movie channel plays on the television behind him.

“Hey there, big guy,” Lance greets, winking slyly as a coy smile spreads out over his lips, “Lookin’ pretty handsome in that business suit today. Purple’s a good color on you.”

Shiro feels immediately warmer, as he looks down at the button up that he’s wearing under his suit jacket, as though to confirm that it is, in fact, the lavender one that he picked out when he and Keith went to the store to pick out slip-resistant shoes for Keith’s part-time job at the snack booth at his university. Shiro had tasked himself, while Keith had dug through the many shoe boxes for his size, with picking out a larger variety of work clothes aside from the uninspiring white that he’d grown too bored of, far too soon.

He’d convinced himself then that maybe he’d pick out a more interesting wardrobe. Maybe he’d catch the attention of some cute person at his job.

Maybe he’d finally find the motivation to stop pining after Keith and Lance, and he could move on to something less miserable, to vying for the attention of another person that he wouldn’t constantly feel as though he was festering in helplessly.

He’d ended up picking out a couple of shirts in pastel blue and lavender. Keith had suggested a pink one jokingly, and for whatever reason, he’d bought that one too. But no one at his job had considered him particularly interesting or unique because he didn’t suit the general monochromatic color scheme. He didn’t end up meeting his dream lover and enjoying the wonderful throes of his rousing pastel-hued, Hollywood-esque, business casual romance.

He finds himself two years later still rotting away in these unrequited feelings for Keith and Lance—still grappling desperately for both of their attention even though he knows that hoping for any semblance of a romantic spark is just as fruitless as assuming that anyone would approach him for a date at work just because he’d bought a new shirt.

But even still, he likes the purple—and he likes that Lance likes the purple.

He clears his throat as though to answer, steadies himself as he runs his fingers over the edges of his jacket, as though he’s considering taking it off. Keith snorts from his spot next to the microwave, as Shiro picks up the smell of another bag of popcorn quickly burning, but Keith makes no move to open the door or stop the timer.

“You say that about every color that he wears, Lance.”

Lance bites his lip, his cheeks darkening a few shades as he screws up his expression into the most convincing snarl that he can muster through his laughter, before pointing an accusatory finger right past Shiro at Keith.

“I’ve never said it to his face before! Why do you always have to ruin my game by telling people every lame thing that I tell you in confidence? Those are secrets, Keith! Secrets between lovers should be kept safely behind locked doors!”

They begin bickering about Lance’s apparent “lack of tact” and Keith’s inability not to ruin moments for him. Shiro can tell that it’s lighthearted, can read easily that neither of them are taking this too seriously. But it makes him wonder, as he finally shrugs off his jacket and tosses it over the side of the vacant living room chair, before taking a seat next to Lance, how often Lance flirts with people outside of his and Keith’s relationship that this is so normal between them.

And he wonders, with a sting of something that he knows that he definitely doesn’t deserve to feel in his chest, if perhaps this is as normal and acceptable to them as Keith sleeping in Shiro’s bed. If maybe, as long as they never do anything to betray each other’s trust, they’re allowed to have as many meaningless encounters and experiences with other people as they could possibly want to have.

Shiro doesn’t think that Keith and Lance are purposefully playing with his heart.

He doesn’t think that they’d be cruel enough to pull his heartstrings if they had any way of knowing what terrible things he’s been thinking privately about them, all this time.

But when Lance slides across the couch and latches onto Shiro’s arm, when he presses the tops of his thighs against Shiro’s leg and his head against the side of his shoulder, Shiro wonders if maybe they really are aware of how he’s felt about them all along.

And, if maybe, they’re  _trying_  to kill him.

If maybe, Keith has known that Shiro has been pining after him for years, and he doesn’t like it. He told Lance, who also decided that Shiro is a sicko for having these disgusting urges to do perverted things to a person who obviously doesn’t care about him like that—and the two of them began plotting together and formulated this devious plan.

Make Shiro fall in love with Lance too. Invite him along to all of their dates. Be beautiful (which comes naturally, he knows, and it isn’t particularly fair to blame either of them for something that they have so little control over), be charming, be everything that Shiro could ever imagine a perfect partner to be.

And torture him.

Dangle domesticity right in front of his nose, but pry it away immediately, every time that he reaches for it.

If he weren’t so miserable right now, so eager to dwell in his overwhelming self-pity, he would admit that the mere idea of Keith and Lance conspiring against him by making themselves out to be the ideal mates is just about as hilarious as the mental image of them plotting out every lingering touch of Lance’s hand on his arm, every cute look that Keith sends him late at night while they’re cuddling in his bed.

He knows that he’s overthinking this. He knows that, in no shape or form, could any of this be on purpose.

But Lance flutters his eyelashes in the most endearing way, when Shiro accidentally looks down in his direction. He presses his lips against Shiro’s shoulder once again, in that almost-kiss, with a bashful look to him that Shiro thinks frames his face just as handsomely as just about every other expression that he’s capable of making.

And Shiro realizes with sudden, inordinate clarity, that none of this can possibly be on accident.

No one can conceivably be so naive that they couldn’t even fathom the effects that acting so intimate could have on another person.

He practically flies from the couch towards the television. He’s so quick that it catches Lance completely off-guard. Lance promptly falls forward onto the couch, sending Shiro a wide-eyed, open-mouthed expression of absolute, befuddled astonishment.

“Everything okay?” Keith asks from the kitchen, and although Shiro’s adrenaline is now pumping through his veins so quickly that he can barely focus on anything but how terribly he just wants to get out of here until he can clear his head, he still manages to register Keith moving from the kitchen into the living room, his eyes watching the two of them so intensely that Shiro can feel them branding, like searing iron, into his skin.

Somewhere, just beyond the reach of his stress-fueled bubble, he hears the ding of the microwave timer running out. In the air, the smell of burned popcorn is so pungent that he wonders if he’s about to have a stroke.

“I—I can’t do this,” Shiro barks, flinching as Keith draws ever-nearer, backing up so far that his back hits the wall next to the TV, “I just—you guys are together, I-I respect that. I want you guys to be happy, but you need to stop getting me involved in this.”

Lance and Keith exchange a short, perplexed look. Shiro feels as though he’s stumbled into an alternate dimension where somehow, he’s the weird one for not being okay with any of this.

“Shiro, what are you talking about?”

Lance’s voice is careful, devoid the sarcasm or the bravado that Shiro is so familiar hearing in his tone.

Shiro takes a moment to compose himself, breathing in and out slowly and deeply, wiping his hands over his face. He already feels as though he’s said too much, but now there’s no going back. And he reasons that they can’t be upset with him for being honest with them now. He’s tried his hardest to be on his best behavior all this time, for all of these slow-building, agonizing years, and they have to understand that their willingness to make things weirder than they needed to be definitely wasn’t helping him get over all of the improper things that he feels for them.

Even if they’re angry, at the very least, maybe they’ll finally understand why this has been so hard on him.

And maybe, if they both decide that he’s too gross to be around them anymore, the next guy who they tangle up in their twisted web of lingering glances and excruciatingly affectionate gestures might be spared at least a fraction of the heartache.

“I—I’m… I’m attracted to you—to both of you, okay? I’ve tried very hard for a long time to keep things appropriate between us, but when you’re—when you’re sleeping in my bed, and Lance is all over me, and you guys are complimenting me and acting like we’re all together or something, it makes things really difficult. Do you understand that? I know it probably all seems platonic to both of you, but to me—w-with how I feel about you, it’s driving me insane.”

No one speaks for a moment. Shiro is entirely too terrified to look at either of their expressions.

After the agony of silence, he’s ripped from his solemn acceptance that things must finally be over, by the sound of Lance inexplicably bursting into a loud, barking laughter.

“Are you serious?” Lance wheezes between breaths, tears prickling at the corners of his eyes. He’s holding himself tightly now, rocking forward and back ever-so slightly as he guffaws, and it takes everything within Shiro now not to storm out of the apartment in the face of such an offensive reaction to the hardest confession that he’s ever had to make. “Y—you really don’t know?”

Okay, so that last part definitely doesn’t make any sense. The mood shift so suddenly that he feels as though the floor has been pulled out from underneath him. The vertigo sets in, his head swims. Dizzy, stressed, and confused, he looks to Keith for assistance or even the most remote semblance of an explanation.

Keith’s bottom lip is jutting out, his arms wrapped loosely around his chest. With one hip cocked to the side, he’s watching Shiro with a virtually unreadable expression—but it isn’t anger, and Shiro doesn’t understand why. He knows that Keith can never conceal his rage, when someone manages to push him firmly over that threshold.

He knows that Keith, usually, isn’t exactly the most closed book when it comes to his more saturated emotions. He knows that, if Keith were mad at him, he wouldn’t be floundering in confusion as desperately as he is right now.

Shiro grapples with the right words to say, as Lance’s laughter dies away. Keith cuts him off, just as he starts stumbling his way through something that vaguely resembles a confused, albeit very heartfelt apology.

“Do you really have no idea what’s going on?”

Shiro flinches backwards, his cheeks growing even hotter than they were before. He fumbles with his words once again, before settling on simply shaking his head no.

Keith sighs.

“I told you we should have just talked to him about it,” Lance croons, now spread out on his belly on the couch, his head propped up on his arms against the armrest, “I told him, Shiro,  _‘We gotta explain things to him, no one can just be expected to get it right away’_ , but Keith, you know… mister  _full-of-himself_  over here, he was determined that you’d just catch on eventually and you were totally into it without any of us ever having to talk about it.”

Shiro watches him for a moment, before switching his sights to Keith. Keith’s face is a little bit pinker now. He’s glaring hard at something in the corner of the room.

“I just—” Keith curses, spitting out a breath and turning that burning gaze right on Shiro, “I thought you—I thought you just figured it out! What kind of friend still sleeps in his other friend’s bed like that?!”

“That’s what I wanted to know!” Shiro blurts, waving his hands in the air.

He feels as though he’s still in some bizarre alternate timeline, and things are only continuing to get weirder.

Lance snorts another laugh.

“You really didn’t think that we, you know… were trying to seduce you or anything? Do you think I’m all over every single guy I meet?”

Shiro feels too guilty to confirm that, but in his resounding silence, Keith snickers, and Lance pulls the most offended face that Shiro has ever seen from him.

“Okay, so we’re all idiots!” He bursts, “You thought that I was some kind of slutty… gropey pervert! Me and Keith thought that you were our boyfriend! I think we’re totally even here!”

Shiro freezes, his thoughts jamming up immediately, as soon as the words leave Lance’s mouth.

“Y-your… your _boyfriend_?!”

Keith is watching him now like a hawk, unblinking and unabashed. Shiro has always admired the way that Keith can tackle just about any situation with an ease and a nonchalance that he could never personally hope to grasp. He’s always secretly loved Lance’s casual, cavalier attitude in the face of even the most stressful situations. But now, as Shiro stands awkwardly in the center of the room and the two of them look to him expectantly—Lance, still slumped over on the couch with that sly, knowing smile, Keith, with his arms crossed over his chest, cocking his head to the side—Shiro feels as though maybe everything would be a lot easier if they could at least act like they’re remotely embarrassed about any of this.

“How… how long?”

His voice sounds unfamiliar even in his own ears. It’s so feeble and unsure, so cracked with uncertainty and insecurity.

Keith raises an eyebrow, turning his gaze to the ceiling as though it’s taking every ounce of his inner strength not to roll them in frustration.

“I don’t know,” he draws out, snapping his gaze suddenly back at Shiro, with an abruptness that causes him to jerk back, as though Keith has reached out and smacked him, “Like a year? Maybe a year and a half. However long it’s been since we started inviting you out with us.”

Shiro gapes, making as though to push some semblance of a retort from his shriveled lungs and dry throat, but only managing a pathetic, wordless squeak.

“You really didn’t suspect anything?” Lance asks, antagonizing, but somehow still managing to sound as though all of this is a joke, “Like, after we paid every single time? Even when I kissed you on New Year's, or like… every time after that?”

Shiro shakes his head.

“You were drunk!” He squawks, “A-and I thought you guys were just being nice! W-what about both of you, anyway?! You didn’t think it was weird that I never tried to kiss you or, o-or sleep with you when I could have?!”

Keith lowers his brows, his frown growing firmer, his shoulders tensing up. He moves just a fraction closer towards Shiro, and Lance pushes himself up onto his elbows, then into a seated position on the couch.

“We just figured that you weren’t into sex,” Keith tells him, waving a hand dismissively in the air, “It’s not a big deal. It’s not like we just wanted sex from you anyway.”

Shiro, in this moment, under the mountainous weight of every revelation crashing down around him today, flounders. He opens and closes his mouth a few times, his eyes wide, his entire body vibrating with pent up energy.

“O-of course I want to have sex with you!” His words betray him. He’s yelling before his rampant thoughts even manage to slow down long enough to list off all of the reasons why admitting this is a very, very bad idea. “Do you know how many times I’ve thought about the two of you just—just  _together_ , when Lance spends the night?! Or how easy it would be to just take things further when you’re hugging me in bed, or—or how easy it would have been to kiss Lance back, but—but it would have ruined everything! I-I thought… I didn’t think you guys wanted me like that.”

“Of course we do.”

Keith’s voice is so quiet, so gentle and absent of the blunt gruffness that Shiro expects to find in him that it shocks him into silence. The two of them stare at each other for a moment, until Lance stands abruptly, strolls the two of three feet between the couch and Shiro, and slings his arms over Shiro’s shoulders as though this is the most normal thing in the world.

“So we can have sex with you then?” Lance asks, all pretense thrown to the wind. All stress and worry and possible indignation in the face of finding out that whatever he’s been thinking all along is completely wrong totally pushed to the side in favor of… whatever this is now, “And you wanna date us too, right? Even though we were wrong, and I guess we weren’t already dating, you’re not… turning us down? You really wanna do this?”

Shiro’s eyes flick from Lance’s soft smile, those tantalizing lips, the pretty flush against his cheeks and his long lashes dark against his skin. His gaze fixes then, from Lance’s white, straight teeth poking through the corners of his mouth, to Keith watching him from a few feet away, behind him. And Keith is flushing now, turning his own gaze to the floor. He’s clearing his throat and drawing nearer, placing a hand on Lance’s shoulder and pulling him gently away.

One of Lance’s hands stays firmly on his shoulder. Shiro watches, his skin growing impossibly hotter, as Keith tugs Lance into a kiss.

Shiro has seen them peck each other on the lips at the end of their dates. He’s seen them linger longer, taking their time in their little affectionate bubble—he’s watched them kiss in all sorts of ways, but it’s never been like this.

He swallows thickly as he watches Keith’s tongue drag along Lance’s lips, nearly chokes as Lance moans and opens his mouth wider, as Keith cracks open an eye and peers in his direction, watching him, unflinchingly, as he drags his hands over Lance’s chest, dips down, and touches Lance somewhere down below that drags another of those sweet, intoxicating noises from his throat.

Slowly, Keith pulls away. Shiro feels so pinned under his gaze that he can’t move even an inch. He can hear Lance’s heavy breathing, listens to the way that he curses softly, murmurs, “You really aren’t wasting any time here, are you Keith?”

Keith is still staring at Shiro when he responds, “I’ve wanted this for a long time. You know you have too.”

Shiro feels his blood pool south at such an alarming rate that the newest onset of lightheadedness nearly knocks him off of his feet.

He doesn’t have a lot of time to consider this, to suffer in silence, before Lance is removing himself from Keith, pressing forward, pulling him down.

Lance’s lips against his lips are just as soft as he remembers from that blearly, half-awareness when the countdown had ended on New Year’s day, when Lance had pulled him into that messy, drunken kiss. It feels just as good sober as it had back then—better even, because he can feel the full force of Lance folded against him, the firmness of something between his legs pressing hard against him. He can feel how smooth Lance’s skin is, can smell the vanilla of whatever lotion he must have concocted in his bathroom last night.

And he can feel Keith’s eyes on him, nearly laughs when he manages to open his eyes and peer around at Keith, and Keith’s watching the both of them with such a hungry, unbreakable stare that he feels as though it’s taking everything that Keith has not to attack both of them and tear off their clothes right in the middle of their burnt-popcorn-scented living room.

“So,” Lance’s voice is a mere whisper in place of sound when he pulls back. Shiro can feel his words warm against his skin, “You’ll sleep with us then? Right now?”

Shiro clears his throat, finds that he can’t speak, and instead, nods more furiously and eagerly than he thinks might look cool or charming to either of them. Lance smiles all the same, grasps him around the wrists and tugs him forward.

“Have you ever slept in Keith’s bed?” Lance asks him, as Keith pulls away and leads them from the living room into the hall, “It’s really nice. Memory foam, right, Keith—”

Keith offers nothing but a dull grunt for an answer, pushing open his bedroom door.

“—it’s real good at masking sounds. You’ve never heard us messing around, have you?”

Shiro elects not to respond to that. And he’s in luck, because while Keith sends him a wry look over his shoulder, as he flicks on the light, Lance ignores his silence in favor of continuing his excited rambling.

“Keith was always worried that you could hear us or something, but secretly, I think he  _wanted_  you to hear—”

“Lance.”

“He’d always make a point of being really quiet, then if I brought it up, like,  _“Maybe if Shiro hears us he’ll come in and join”_ , you won’t believe how hard he’d fuck me after that—”

“ _Lance_.”

“Honestly, I have no idea how the two of you never hooked up before this. I mean, when I met you, I could tell that the sexual tension was so thick that you could probably cut it with a knife—”

“Lance!”

“Like, I can’t really blame him though. I was a little worried at first, you know, about this cute guy who I liked being super into his roommate, but when I met you, like, literal Adonis brought to life, who wouldn’t want a piece of that—”

“LANCE!”

Keith’s voice is so loud that it feels as though it rattles through the room. Shiro can imagine that even the neighbors on the first floor can hear it, despite the fact that they’re all the way on the top. The two of them flinch, then freeze, as Keith stares at them, red-faced, from where he’s been digging through the bedside drawer to find—Shiro swallows thickly—what appears to be a half-empty bottle of lube and a small roll of condoms.

Lance offers nothing but a nervous laugh, his grip on Shiro’s wrist tightening slightly.

“Am I in trouble now, or—” Keith immediately cuts him off.

“Can we talk about this shit later? Do you really want to spend the first night that we’re together ranting at him about—about…  _that_?”

The “that” in question, is apparently the crush that Keith has had on him since before he got together with Lance. It’s the idea that Lance himself immediately understood it, culminated it, supported it thoughtlessly and even began to feel the same.

It’s the idea that the two of them have wanted him just as much as he’s wanted them, all this time, without any of them knowing that their feelings could possibly be reciprocated.

Well, he tells himself, it must not have been that big of a secret that he’d felt the same for them, but…

Lance lets go of his wrist, drawing further into the room and pulling Keith into his arms. They’re kissing again, Keith drops the contents of his hands onto the mattress. Shiro watches them, torn between lingering behind and enjoying this new and improved view of them, or coming closer and getting involved as well—since he’s allowed to now, he realizes. Since he’s more than welcome to touch them and kiss them and love them as much as he’s always dreamed of.

Lance breaks the kiss, whispering something to Keith that Shiro can’t quite hear, before climbing over the condoms and the lube and situating himself on the bed. From a seated position, he pulls his shirt over his head, tossing it somewhere off to the side and dropping his head to rest on his shoulder.

Shiro watches him, undeniably hard. He watches as Lance drags his fingers over the subtle lines in his chest, tweaks one of his nipples, draws his fingers through his hair.

And he extends a hand to point then, right in Shiro’s direction. He rotates his hand, and beckons Shiro forward with the jerk of that finger in back towards himself.

Keith spits a laugh.

“Are you really going to pull that cheesy porno shit on him?”

Lance balks immediately, craning his neck with red cheeks to send Keith a hot glare.

“L-look, I didn’t say anything about you coming over and making out with me in front of him! I’ve got game, okay?! Shiro likes it!”

Keith scoffs, and Shiro takes this as his indication to finally come closer to the bed.

“Sorry, Keith,” he says slowly, carefully, “but I gotta side with Lance on this one.”

He’s pressing one knee onto the mattress when Lance whoops his celebration. He sticks out his tongue, offering a petulant,  _“Take that, asshole!”_  that Keith responds to by grasping him by the hair and pulling him into a more forceful kiss.

Shiro crawls further forward, surprised when the mattress is, in fact, silent under his weight. He laments on the fact that Keith’s bed has been far more comfortable this entire time, wondering, with an inkling of something embarrassing and all-consuming burning inside of him, why in the world Keith would choose to sleep in his far inferior bed in favor of something this nice.

He knows the answer to that. But instead of considering it, he leans forward and presses his lips to Lance’s neck, just below his ear. Lance hums his approval immediately, twining his fingers through Shiro’s hair as he sucks lightly, as he offers the gentle press of his teeth. Shiro can feel Keith’s hand on his shoulder then, pushing him downward, dragging down his back as Keith stops kissing Lance and steps away, rounding them on the bed.

It’s big enough that Shiro doesn’t doubt that they’ll all fit. He doesn’t have the time to wonder what Keith is up to behind him, however, when Lance takes this opportunity to pull him down into another kiss.

Lance’s tongue glides against his own. Lance’s fingers tug at his hair. Behind him, he can feel Keith fiddling with his belt, can feel it pulled through his belt-loops, can hear it clinking as it’s tossed somewhere to the side onto the floor.

He can feel Keith snaking an arm around him, ghosting his fingers over the firmness in the front of his pants, pressing his palm into it softly, torturously, before reaching further upward to pull down his fly. Lance’s hands have deviated from his hair, beginning to undo the buttons of his shirt.

Shiro has never felt as out of control as he does right now. He’s never felt as helplessly at another person’s mercy as he does in this moment—undressed like a doll by the two of them, tethered between them by the pleasure of Keith’s hands gentle against as they pull down his pants, and Lance’s touch, light, almost ticklish, as he makes slow work of undoing every button down the front of his shirt.

He shrugs it off when Lance pushes the last button through its hole. He raises each leg up, one at a time, balancing himself on his arms as Keith does away with his pants. He feels vaguely flustered now, being the most naked of the three of them—groaning softly as Lance raises his hips to grind their erections together, but he’s too pleased by the realization that Lance, at least, is just as excited as he is to dwell on his inhibitions for too long.

Keith, behind him, doesn’t waste any time before pulling down his boxers. Lance leans up just far enough that his lips press against his ear, his breath warm as it tickles the side of his face.

“You should undress me too, Shiro,” he whispers, “I need you so bad right now.”

Shiro never would have considered that a sentence alone might threaten to make him cum in his pants—but here he is, moaning, shuddering, drawing in a deep, staggered breath in order to calm himself down enough that he doesn’t finish too soon and ruin everything that they’ve been building up throughout these last few moments.

He swallows, nodding, jerky and shaky. His hand trembles as he glides it over Lance’s firm belly, as he pushes the button of his pants through the hole and pulls down his fly. Keith reaches around him and grabs something, but he doesn’t have time to focus on it while Lance is lifting up his hips to allow Shiro to tug his pants down his legs and over his ankles.

His underwear come down along with his pants. His erection bobs in the air, proud and swollen, pressing out into the space between them from smooth, hairless skin. Shiro leans forward, before he can even understand what his body is compelling him to do. He pushes his backside further towards Keith, props it up in the air as he leans forward to take Lance’s cock into his mouth.

Lance moans eagerly, draws back up his hands to comb his fingers through Shiro’s hair.

“I knew you liked giving head,” Lance practically purrs in delight, “I always told Keith that you’d like doing it.”

Shiro chooses to ignore that, taking Lance deeper into his throat. Keith clicks his tongue.

“Don’t bully him,” Keith says simply. Lance moans a laugh.

“I—I’m not!” He breathes, shuddering as Shiro lifts his gaze to meet his, drinking in the pretty pink hue to his cheeks, the charming way that he bites his bottom lip, “It—it’s not like we don’t like doing it too.”

Shiro busies himself, distracts himself from his own embarrassment, by bobbing his head up and down. Lance isn’t abnormally large or girthy, but he feels good in his mouth. He’s smooth here, soft and warm. He smells good everywhere—smells tropical, like summer, like warmth, like something sunny and bright, something that skitters hot pleasure under Shiro’s skin. He smells, Shiro would assume, like someone who takes pride in their appearance, and he wonders if Keith enjoys that about Lance too. He wonders if he, too, should make a point of trying out more body products just to make experiences like these more enjoyable for both of them.

He nearly jumps out of his skin when he feels something firm pressing between his cheeks, threatening to dip inside of him. Keith’s finger, he realizes after a brief moment of panic, swirls around the muscle there. It’s slick and warm—coated with the lube that Shiro suddenly realizes that he grabbed from next to them just a few moments prior. And slowly, carefully, when Shiro forces himself to relax enough and untense his muscles, that finger slips inside.

In all of his fantasies about his first time with Keith, he’d always imagined that he would be the one on top. But in all of his forbidden dreams about sleeping with both of them, he’s never been too sure how they’d be situated, exactly. He finds that this makes more sense than it probably should—himself, tucked in the middle. Finally being able to experience if all of Lance’s cockiness about his sexual prowess is just for show, or if he really does have the expertise to back those claims up.

Lance is already doing a good job of driving him wild. He’s sure that, by the end of this, he’ll be another pleased customer on Lance’s supposedly lengthy list.

Keith presses his finger further inside, doing a brilliant job of avoiding the one spot inside of him that he knows would ramp the pleasure that he’s feel now from a vague fuzziness to something heavier, something far more possessing that might push him closer to the edge all over again. He distracts himself from those thoughts by dragging his tongue over the length of Lance as he pulls his head back, and he flinches, slightly, when he feels Keith pushing something against his arm with his free hand.

“Get him ready,” Keith says simply, monotoned, “Don’t you dare let him cum either.”

The item being offered to him is the lube, with one of the condoms from the roll tucked up against it. He pulls himself away from Lance then, ignoring the way that he whines in protest. And he takes the items from Keith, who retracts his arm wordlessly. He sets the condom on the mattress next to him, makes awkward work of uncapping the lube while he steadies himself on one arm, and somehow manages to pour some on his fingers without losing his balance or spilling any of it.

Lance is watching him closely, his eyelids heavy, his lips open as he breathes slowly in and out. Shiro finds himself mesmerized by the gentle color against Lance’s skin, how soft he is, how warm he is to the touch. And he dips forward again, angling his arm so his fingers press between Lance’s cheeks, prodding out a tentative tongue to play with the head of Lance’s dick as he swirls his fingers around the ring of muscles that he finds there.

Lance murmurs a moan, shuffles slightly and spreads his legs wider, lifting his hips slightly from the bed. He’s raised a hand to his face, biting down lightly on the tip of one of his fingers as Shiro lowers his head to take the tip of his erection between his lips once more. Lance shudders a moan then, just as Keith pushes another finger inside.

This time, he skims Shiro’s prostate. A hot, fuzzy coil of energy knots in Shiro’s belly. He pushes his ass further up in the air, and Keith let out a sharp, quick breath.

“You really like this, don’t you?”

Shiro’s mouth is full now, but in his silence, Lance croons a quiet, melodious laugh.

“I—I think he just likes _you_ , dude.”

Shiro can feel Keith’s fingers curl inside of him. He can feel Keith’s hand firmly grasping his ass, spreading him apart, plunging deeper inside of him before pulling out, in again, scissoring, filling him, touching him in just the right way that has his cock standing firmly, desperately at attention.

And the bed tips slightly, when Keith climbs on behind him. Shiro pushes a finger inside of Lance, wriggling it around as he tries to remember exactly where he’s supposed to touch. Lance offers him a few huffed breaths, curses around the finger in his mouth, digs the nails of his free hand into Shiro’s scalp and lightly tugs at his hair.

He adds another finger just as Keith pulls his out. He tries then, to emulate the movements that he’d felt inside of him—entirely too lightheaded and overwhelmed to feel as though he’s doing a very good job.

But Lance seems to appreciate it, at least. He’s thrusting up shallowly into Shiro’s mouth, twitching about as though he isn’t sure if he wants to push upwards into the warmth and wet there, or down onto the fingers stretching out inside of him.

Shiro can feel Keith shifting around, listens to the sound of one of those condom wrappers tearing open. He steels himself for what’s obviously coming next, trembles and moans around Lance’s cock when Keith leans over him, chest against his back, and nibbles lightly on the shell of his ear.

“Is Lance ready?” He whispers, something firmer, girthier, trapped between them in the cleft of Shiro’s ass, “He looks ready. Stop teasing him and put on a condom. Come on, he wants it, don’t you Lance?”

Lance whimpers something that sounds close enough to yes for Keith, it seems. Shiro is so taken aback by the sight of him—breathless and flushed, spread out and wanton here, as though he’d allow Shiro to do anything to him that he might want to do without question—to move for a fraction of a second too long.

Keith impatiently grabs him by the shoulder, hauling him up. Lance whimpers at the loss of a mouth around his cock once again, bucks up his hips as though he might be able to find that warmth again, if he searches for it. Shiro almost laughs, but decides to take the offered condom from Keith’s hand instead. He smiles sheepishly as he tears the pack open, careful with it between his fingers as he discards the packaging and rolls it over his erection.

He grabs Lance under one knee then, pulling his ass further up. As he bends, ever-so slightly, Keith is grasping at his ass again, spreading his cheeks, and guiding himself further forward.

Shiro has never felt stimulated on both sides before. He’s never experienced being sandwiched between two people. He shivers slightly, as he falls forward and braces himself against one hand, as he angles himself carefully between Lance’s cheeks, huffing out a breath as the head of his cock pushes against it, eases in, meets the warmth and the tightness and the slick wetness of lube that he finds inside.

Lance’s resounding moan is long and dragged out.

“I—I knew you were f-fucking hung,” he keens, in a sing-song tone that’s ruined only by the heavy weight of his own pleasure, “K-Keith, God, he’s so  _big_.”

He can feel Keith pressing inside of him as well—hisses at the introduction of a tingly sort of pain as Keith’s cock begins to slide inside of him, leans forward and buries his face into the crook of Lance’s shoulder, stilling his movements until Keith fills him up completely.

He can feel Keith leaning against him again, chest against back, lips on his ear.

“Y-you okay?” he asks, tentative, breathy, as he makes an awkward show of drawing gentle hands up and down Shiro’s sides, as though that might alleviate his discomfort somehow.

Shiro steadies his breathing, allows himself to relax. After a moment, the twinge of it ebbs away, and he finds himself tethered more comfortably between the two of them, eager to start moving, to experience as many sensations with the two of them as he can possibly feel all at once.

“I—I’m okay,” he shudders, propping himself up again, squeezing an arm between himself and Lance and grabbing with clumsy hands for Lance’s cock, “Go ahead, u-uh, you—you can move now.”

Keith shifts soon after, pulls out halfway and shoves back inside again. He’s slow at first, taking his time, as Shiro takes in the new sensation of it—learns at first to get used to such a foreign feeling, then finds pleasure building up like bubbles in his belly.

He gets used to Keith’s pacing, eases his thrusts inside and out of Lance to match it. He pulls out just as Keith pushes in, meets each of Keith’s thrusts with his own, upward, then back down. And it feels amazing—feels better than anything he’s ever felt before.

He wonders why he’d wasted all of those months alone with his own hand. He wonders why he didn’t make a move on either Keith or Lance so much sooner than this.

He tries his best to touch Lance while he thrusts, but Lance bats his hand away, offering him the best wink that he can muster as Shiro grazes effortlessly over his prostate in a way that has him melting under Shiro’s touch.

“J—just focus on you, big guy,” Lance shudders at him, dopey-smiled, glossy-eyed, “F-feels good, doesn’t it?”

Shiro doesn’t even know how Lance can manage to speak right now. He, himself, is barely even capable of understanding words at all.

Keith bites down harder on the shell of his ear, speeds up his thrusts, hits him in just the right spot every single time. Shiro feels as though he’s being led by this pleasure more than he’s an active participant in any of this. He’s pulled by the current of a mighty sea, lost so wholly, so desperately in Lance’s tsunami eyes, in the storm of Keith’s overwhelming passion. He feels as though he’s drowning now, in the ocean of both of them. Feels as though he might never live long enough to gasp for air.

But Lance kisses him again, anchors him to the here and now. To the feeling of Lance so hot and tight around him. To the squelching of Lance jerking himself off between them—to the sensation of Keith pounding inside of him from behind.

And quickly—so intensely that he can barely control himself as he cries out, his whimpers and moans swallowed up against Lance’s lips—he feels himself propelled over the edge, cums hard and desperately, just as Keith thrusts hard and unapologetically right against his prostate, just as Lance tightens up around him and spills his own seed over his belly.

Shiro buries himself deep inside of Lance as he orgasms, kisses him, sloppy and unpracticed, grasps the sheets under his palms so tightly that he worries that he might tear them apart.

And moments later, just as the blur of his orgasm begins to fade away, Keith pushes inside of him one last time, buries a moan into the center of his back, and Shiro can feel his cock twitching inside as he cums, just before Keith allows himself to go slack, rubbery and heavy against him.

After a moment, as the three of them regain their bearings, Keith presses a kiss between his shoulder blades, Lance sandwiches his face between both hands and leads him into another kiss.

And Shiro, breathless, fumbling over everything swirling around so dizzyingly inside of his head, finally manages to speak.

“Wh… why did I ever waste time not having sex with both of you?”

Lance’s laughter is loud enough that everyone in their entire apartment complex can probably hear it. And Keith, too, muffles laughter as he pulls out and steps off of the bed to clean himself up.

“I guess you just didn’t know what you were missing out on,” Lance offers, pecking him a few times in quick succession on the lips, “But now, you’d better watch out for us now.”

Shiro feels a shudder of excitement ripple through him, just as Keith comes up behind him and begins wiping him off with whatever shirt or underwear or another unnamed article of clothing that he must have chosen from his laundry basket. Keith, too, seems to be in high spirits. When Shiro turns to catch his eye, he’s met with another charming, bashful smile.

“He’s right,” Keith tells him, “We have to make up for lost time.”

Shiro feels then as though maybe he should be intimidated. As though maybe he should realize that he’s gotten himself into something so much bigger than he could have ever anticipated.

But he’s happy, between the both of them. He’s happy when he pulls out of Lance and Keith helps clean them off, when the three of them slide under the blankets after Keith turns off the light.

Shiro, tucked in between both of them, wondering how he could have ever missed so many signs that are now so obvious in hindsight.

Wondering why he wasted so much time feeling insecure, doubting that either of these men could ever love him.

And knowing, with absolution, just as his mind eases away into sleep, that whatever tomorrow brings, wherever their relationship may go, things are absolutely perfect right now.

Tucked between Keith and Lance, there’s nowhere and no one that he would rather be.

**Author's Note:**

> This story was a request from the lovely [Epiproctan](http://epiproctan.tumblr.com)! It was honestly a ton of fun to write, so I hope you guys enjoyed it! Thanks so much for reading! 
> 
> [tumblr](http://curionabang.tumblr.com), [twitter](https://twitter.com/MothIsland)


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